bomb shelters

In 1961, a Washington lawyer named Steuart Pittman was tapped by President John F. Kennedy’s administration for a singularly unpleasant job: getting Americans to prepare for a nuclear Armageddon. As assistant secretary of defense, Pittman was in charge of the nation’s civil defense program. He headed a crash effort, ordered by JFK, to build fallout shelters across the nation to protect the nation’s population against Soviet missiles and bombers. It was a scary time, given escalating tensions between the United …